Before
The crying never stopped. Each tiny, mewling noise he made increased her panic. It expanded, pressing against her chest until she thought she might explode. When Grace was gone at work, she would leave him in the bassinet and let them both cry until one of them fell asleep. Faith dreamed of faces she’d left behind her. There had been a lot of bad people she’d left in California, but there had been kind ones, too. Someone was always willing to share a score or offer a couch. More than a few times, a man had welcomed her into his home. Some of them fell in love with her and she fell in love with their warm beds and clean sheets. She fucked most of them. It was part of the arrangement. She’d made love to one.
Max had his eyes. His kind, blue eyes that made her want to be someone better than she was. He told her that she had to have faith in herself because it was in her nature—that her mama must have known that when she named her. She wanted to believe him. She might have loved him. She left him when she found out she was pregnant. He wasn’t the type to support a habit. She’d promised him to stay clean and then she’d gotten on her knees, and worse, to support it herself instead. It would have hurt him to know that. It would have destroyed him if the baby turned out not to be his, and she knew he would have been able to tell. The possibilities were limited as to who had fathered the baby. She’d been faithful to him except when it came to paying for what he wouldn’t provide.
When Max slept, she pictured him in the room his daddy would have given him. It would have been the small one overlooking the ocean. He loved the sound of the waves. Each time she imagined it, the vision blazed through her, like those first drinks had years ago. Maybe she was addicted to him as well, but really she knew that he’d been a safe place. She wanted to believe she could love him, but love wasn’t in the stack she’d been dealt.
If she loved anyone it was Grace. She should love Max but every time she searched for the emotion, it was absent. Perhaps love wasn’t free either and she wasn’t willing to pay whatever price it solicited. She stared at the popcorn ceiling and considered that as Max wailed in the bedroom. Faith didn’t bother to sit up as the front door slammed shut.
“Christ, Faith! Can’t you hear him?” Grace didn’t bother to wait for a response. A few minutes later, the crying had ceased and she appeared, holding Max, over Faith’s head. “He just wants to be held.”
Faith suspected he wanted to be loved, but she said nothing. That’s why he calmed down for Grace and not her. A familiar stab of pain struck her, lingering in her skin. She was beginning to hate Grace. That she could feel. She’d felt it toward herself for years. She hated Grace for being everything she could not be, and herself for everything she was. Max’s presence only reinforced that truth. Outwardly, she shrugged. “He cries all the time.”
Grace sat at the end of the couch and sighed audibly.
“Look,” she began, “I know this is an adjustment. It is for me, too. But maybe you should make an appointment with your doctor—“
“Don’t start that again,” Faith cut her off. She knew all too well that a pill wasn’t going to fix anything. She’d tried them all.
“You don’t have to take anything if you’re scared.”
Grace still labored under the impression that Faith wanted to be clean. She believed Faith had run away from that life, when really she’d been running from the truth. That was clear now.
“It won’t work.” As far as she was concerned there was nothing more to say.
“Then let’s at least get out of the house,” Grace urged, the first notes of frustration straining her voice.
“I think we’re supposed to stay home for a few months.” That probably wasn’t true but it sounded like it could be. All the other rules regarding being pregnant and having a baby made about as much sense to her.
“Oh my God, I’m no longer suggesting it, I’m demanding it. You aren’t an invalid, you’re a mother!” She pushed unsteadily onto her feet, cradling Max carefully. He’d finally fallen asleep and now she wanted to leave. But as she stood, he opened one bleary eye, smiled drunkenly as if Grace was intoxicating, and settled back into his dreams.
That was how she was supposed to look exactly. It was the trouble with being around her sister, she was an ever-present reflection of what Faith secretly wished. Grace was her fairy tale mirror, showing her the right way to do things.
“Fine,” she agreed reluctantly. She would try. She had nothing else to give either of them but effort.
They went to the Pacific Science Center on Grace’s employee pass and took turns holding Max.